A subject that has captured the hearts and minds of people around the world since the 1940's is the Holocaust. The Holocaust is a term used to describe the termination of the Jewish population in German and Austria by Hitler and the Nazis. In short, Hitler led a group of people into committing genocide on the Jews and other people in the Germanic area during World War II.

Although Hitler had been in power for a while before the 2nd world war started, his agenda became clear as the 2nd world war progressed. So many atrocities were being committed against innocent civilians that other European countries took it upon themselves to fight the Axis powers -- Nazi Germany, Empire of Japan and Fascist Italy. These places had control of a large part of Europe, Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Their dictators in power had alliances with each other to take over the world with their philosophies.

But the rest of the world did not agree and soon went in to overcome these Axis powers, but not before close to 7 million Jews and other undesirable races to the Nazi's of Germany were killed in the last couple of years of the war. Their deaths weren't casualties of war, they were the goals of the war in Nazi Germany's mind.

It would take years for Germany to rebuild itself into the nation it is today. It would also take many years for the Jewish population to come to terms with what was an attempt to assassinate the entire race. And it was definitely take years for the film industry to think about putting the atrocity on the big screen.

World War I, the Korean War, Vietnam and other wars were being immortalized on film already by the late 1960's. But it was a hard thing for the world to come to terms with that Hitler had led a massacre that was as big as Attila the Hun's. There were definitely films made about the war itself starting in 1940 by mostly the United Kingdom. Britain was heavily involved with the war from the beginning and made films about specific battles. The following years other countries, mainly the US and Germany got involved in making pictures about the war. Most of them were about battles, being on submarines and spy movies. But the Holocaust was not a big plot of these movies.

By 1944 and 1945 the US was the only country turning more than one film about the war a year. In fact, they were turning out at least 10-20. Most of these films in the years following the war were still about battles and men coming home from the war. But then it may have been too much of a tragedy to even talk about or put on screen then. The U-bomb and the attack on Pearl Harbor were popular subjects because they affected America and Japan so much. The fifties saw the biggest years in the amount of films that came out about the war. Over fifty films were produced about it.

Then in 1959, the American film by George Stevens "The Diary of Anne Frank" was adapted to the screen from the actual diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich. It was the first to really take on the subject of the Holocaust without really getting into the heads of the Germans. It did get into the mindset of the Jews who had to hide out because they were being hunted by the Nazi's.

For the next 30 years, over 100 films were made across the world about World War II but it wasn't until 1982 when Genocide, a documentary by Arnold Schwartzman about the Holocaust and the Jewish experience came about that it was finally discussed on a grand scale. It consists mostly of pictures of the time and commentary by survivors.

Then in 1985 when a 9 hour long documentary about the Holocaust called Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, it was then that a film really focused on the tragedy itself again. Shoah is the Hebrew term for Holocaust. The film focused on the concentration camps throughout Germany in the 1940's that Jews were kept in and exterminated in.

In 1990 when the first narrative film that concentrated on the great tragedy of the Holocaust came about in a German film called Europa, Europa by Agnieska Holland. The film is about a Jewish boy whose entire family is killed. He is moved to an orphanage and stays there until he released, pretending not to be of Jewish heritage. He becomes a Nazi, dedicated to eradicating the Jews. The film was highly acclaimed and is one of the best films about the mindset of the Nazis in the 1940's.

Then in 1994, probably the most acclaimed film of Spielberg's career and the quintessential film about the Holocaust came about. It was called Schindler's List. Schindler was a man who saved 1,100 Jews from being murdered by buying them into slavery. But beyond the story Spielberg actually explored the deep tragedies of the war by showing just how big the number of 6 million people is. Hearing the number and then actually seeing it on screen are two different things.

Spielberg let us see the mindset of Nazi Germany in a way that had never before been depicted. He put a human face on hate and let us see the German Nazis were not cold shells of humans. He showed us how easy it would be just regular men to have the notion of creating a tragedy the right thing to do in their minds. And then to make it even more real, at the ed of the film survivors of the Holocaust come to say goodbye to their families at gravesites.

After Europa, Europa and Schindler's List, filmmakers began to explore the tragedy of the Holocaust more as did the world. Spielberg along with other filmmakers and historians created a museum and foundation so that the Holocaust would never be forgotten called The Shoah Foundation.

There are people who deny the Holocaust happened although it would be like denying that there is a sun in the sky so the Shoah foundation is alive to make sure that the millions of people who died will not be forgotten or denied. With Hitler's own speeches and the many who are now dead, the Holocaust is undeniable. In the 1990's, when people became more free to talk about the Holocaust, trials arose for those who had committed war crimes during the Holocaust and some are still going on today.

Filmmakers took advantage of this to expose the many tragedies of the Holocaust. More documentaries were made about the subject and are now viewed at the Shoah Foundation. The most recent acclaimed film about the Holocaust and most likely the most heart-wrenching is The Pianist by Roman Polanski. A pianist who happens to be in a wealthy Jewish family has his entire family wiped away by the German Nazis. He survives only because he amuses the Germans with his piano playing. In the end, he is a broken, hungry, sick man who has had to live on nothing and hide under floorboards to survive. It shows the cruelty of human beings but also how one can triumph.

In this writer's opinion, there are not enough films about the Holocaust because it is a subject that every person should about so that it is not repeated again. There have been Holocaust since then like in Rwanda and in China but political regimes have scared the people into silence and have learned from Hitler not to make it on a big scale. But if filmmakers, artists and those who make a difference raise their voices for the dead, people can certainly learn from this tragedy.

Links: www.wikipedia.com, www.imdb.com, www.vhf.org

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